More Smearing of Scientific Scepticism

IT was once the case that if you didn’t believe in anthropogenic global warming (AGW) and the climate crisis you were a scientist in the pay of big oil. That was also an accusation in Chris Mooney’s first book ‘The Republican War on Science’.

Mr Mooney now has a second book out entitled ‘Unscientific America’. I haven’t read the new book yet, but according to an interview Mr Mooney gave last night on Australian television if you don’t believe in AGW you aren’t even a scientist. Indeed he told well-known ABC journalist and television presenter Leigh Sales that while society hasn’t agreed on the facts, the scientists have.

Ms Sales initially queried Mr Mooney, suggesting that many claim there is no scientific consensus on AGW. But she didn’t then pursue the point when Mr Mooney reframed, side-stepped the question and then contradicted himself.

Much of the preamble compiled by Margo O’Neill and the interview by Ms Sales suggested that being a climate change sceptic was equivalent to being part of the minority against vaccinating children or part of the religious right that argues against the teaching of evolution. Their argument essentially went that there is always a part of a community that holds beliefs that are illogical.

The solution, Mr Mooney explained to Ms Sales, is a better educated population particularly in the area of science which he suggested provides a foundation in critical thinking.

But there was no much critical thinking on display and a small amount of research ahead of the interview would have discovered that Australia’s best known climate change sceptic, Ian Plimer, fought a long and hard campaign against the teaching of creationism in schools. But then again understanding what motivated Professor Plimer to speak out against the teaching of faith as science in our schools would have spoilt their story because the Professor might have explained that speaking out against AGW fundamentalism is really just a continuation of his campaign for critical thinking and real science.

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Notes and Links

Public must engage with scientific fact: book
Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 17/09/2009, Reporter: Margot O’Neill
A new book called Unscientific America has put forward the theory that we are facing a dangerous divide between science and culture.http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2008/s2689426.htm

Yet Americans are paying less and less attention to scientists. For every five hours of cable news, less than a minute is devoted to science; the number of newspapers with weekly science sections has shrunken by two-thirds over the past several decades. Just 18 percent of Americans personally know a scientist to begin with, and exceedingly few can name a living scientist role model. No wonder rejection of science is rampant: 46 percent of Americans deny evolution and think the Earth is less than 10,000 years old;

the book looks fine to me.

that “sceptics” have such a bad reputation among those who are not scientifically illiterate is your own fault.

a few days ago, Louis gave answer in the “abiotic oil” post, that deny plate tectonics and blame
thunderbolts for earthquakes.

Tim Curtin has repeatedly reposted his claim, that measuring temperature at a single station can contradict the theory of global warming. he also is allowed to repeat the plain lie, that the IPCC expects all stations on earth to show warming.

Cohenite just posted a piece full of false claims about European countries suffering from their investments into alternative energy.

as long as those who call themselves sceptics, show absolutely zero scepticism towards arguments that support their own side, they will not earn respect of real scientists.

I take issue with the comments by the two academics from UNSW who basically said that AGW was clear science and anyone who disagreed with it was plainly ignorant. They infer that the only people who oppose AGW are retarded members of the public yet they seem unaware that many of the scientists who oppose their views are actually more qualified than they are and represent universities that are much higher in world ranking than the 150 ranking currently enjoyed by UNSW.

The similarities between how promoters of eugenics sounded in the early 20th century and how AGW promoters sound today are devastating.
Mooney,and anyone making the obviously false assertions Mooney makes, is not only a fraud, but a rather ignorant one, at that.

Mr. Mooney is angry because clean scientists don’t allow him to follow spreading his doctrine on AGW; he who loses his cool loses the game. AGWers are always angry at us; so they always lose.

Why do they get angry? Simple, clean science destroys their pretensions of charging the air (they’re already are selling the water). Clean science disables AGWers from dragging the humankind back to the Paleolithic Era.

Oh and by the way, have read about AGW science, climate and weather extensively for twenty odd years and have come to the conclusion that AGW has been falsified.

What I want to know from you is how I dump my sceptisim when my brain tells me otherwise. Does that make me insane? Why can’t I just accept!!! I feel I should support AGW theory and for Pete’s sake I want to be like everyone else and believe but everytime someone comes up with a reason to believe a little bit of reading later or remembering a fact or two from earlier and “bang” back I slump into being a sceptic.

Should I end it all now sod or wait for the men in white coats or better still wait for my criminal trial as a ” Climate Change Denier”?

But there was no much critical thinking on display and a small amount of research ahead of the interview would have discovered that Australia’s best known climate change sceptic, Ian Plimer, fought a long and hard campaign against the teaching of creationism in schools. But then again understanding what motivated Professor Plimer to speak out against the teaching of faith as science in our schools would have spoilt their story because the Professor might have explained that speaking out against AGW fundamentalism is really just a continuation of his campaign for critical thinking and real science.

Plimer is a sad case. In taking on the creationists, he seems to have become one of them in the use of debating tactics. I tried listening to that talk he gave in Sydney, and it was straight out of the Creationsts cook book. Talk for hours around the point, then give everyone the impression you have disproved the point. In giving a comprehensive view of the past climate, he ignored the science behind the current climate. In the whole geological history of the earth, the human race has only been present for a minute fraction of the time. He can’t generalise that whole past history to this specific point in time.

IT was once the case that if you didn’t believe in anthropogenic global warming (AGW) and the climate crisis you were a scientist in the pay of big oil. That was also an accusation in Chris Mooney’s first book ‘The Republican War on Science’.

You don’t seem to be able to reconcile the need for freedom of speech and the process of developing science. Science is a formal process, with rules for speaking. That is necessary for the advancement of science. Much of what you allow here is non-science, and anti-science. Don’t be disappointed if you are pulled up for that. Try to lift the standard of what you present. As a scientist yourself, I would have thought you would be able to quickly sort what is worth considering from the utter rubbish. When you can leave out the G&T’s and Becks, you will have started.

Mooney has a track record of politicising scientific issues as in his previous book diabolising the Republicans for being anti-science. Such gratutious politicisation of already complex and impassioned issues like AGW is unhelpful. Mooney’s simplistic analysis founders on the fanatical opposition to genetic modification in the US – it mostly comes not from right-leaning creationists but from the left-leaning environmental lobby. I should know, I spent years fighting this extremist lobby here in Australia. Some of the most egregious anti-science in the US comes from new age mysticism, and this also does not come from red-state America but from the blue-state parts of it. What does that tell us about AGW? Nothing either way.

Declaration of interest: I am protestant but not creationist and see pros and cons on both sides of US politics.

SJT, I agree that there is a lot of nonsense published on this blog. There is also as much, if not more nonsense published on the blogs you seem to prefer. That line of attack is a dead-end and just a species of disguised ad hominem. You bring-up Luis, I’ll counter with Al Gore, or Michael Mann and his hockey-stick.

The only way you can sensibly approach this issue is on the facts and the experimental evidence. From what I can see there is much less of that on the AGW side of the debate than the serious skeptical side of the debate. Of course there are nutters on both sides of the argument, but that doesn’t prove, or disprove anything much more than that a certain proportion of any population anywhere will be eccentric to some degree.

sod says, “Cohenite just posted a piece full of false claims about European countries suffering from their investments into alternative energy.”

That is not true sod, I have replied to your accusations about Spain, Denmark and Germany; it’s true Germany did consider downsizing nuclear in 2000 but is now revisiting that green-sponsored folly and is pushing ahead with fossil and nuclear power plans.

When “scientists” like Robyn-100 metres-Williams and this Prof. Andy Pitman [who admits he hasn’t done much high school physics] pontificate on the exacitude of their knowledge and you see daily examples of this self same “science” such as :

plus Hockey Sticks and all the other snake oil with its highly visible bias, it pays for the rest of us to hang as sceptical as we possibly can.
Most simple people are smart enough to realise that science these days equates more with politics than truth.

Ian Plimer is Australia’s cringe factor. A gentleman who fails to disclose his vested interests – director of several mining companies and a chap who likes to mine lead. Australia’s lead emissions by the way exceed those in the US by a factor of 10! Mr Plimer is the laughing stock of the science community and his initial interview on Lateline exposed his dirty tricks campaign – thanks to Jone’s persistence.

As referred to on last night’s lateline, the basic physics in global warming is the first law of thermodynamics – energy in – energy out!

An example for instance is “Heaven and Mirth” and the article I’ve just perused: “More Smearing of Scientific Scepticism”. Garbage in – garbage out!

“The only way you can sensibly approach this issue is on the facts and the experimental evidence. From what I can see there is much less of that on the AGW side of the debate than the serious skeptical side of the debate.”

Graham: I would be curious to know what you consider to be the “experimental evidence” that is largely in favour of the skeptical side…

What an amazing piece – ‘More Smearing of Scientific Scepticism” – and on here we have an endless parade of goons being as vile and personal as possible about Australian scientists they’ve never met. What a bunch of hypocritical turds.

Plimer’s book got panned for being wrong ! The end.

Drop kick a denialist today. Never give them an inch ever. Then they might wake up from their vile dogmatic denialist religion.

As a scientist yourself, I would have thought you [Jennifer] would be able to quickly sort what is worth considering from the utter rubbish.

I dare say she can. It appears she also values a persons right to disagree, their right to have their opinion heard and so on. I would also suggest that, as a scientist, Jennifer is well aware that what really matters is not who shouts the loudest, or who has the biggest crowd behind them, but rather who has the “answer”; ie, whose theory best explains the available evidence. If it’s currently unclear, and I think AGW counts on that score (although I realise you disagree about that), then airing the matter is good for science. “Sceptics” and “heretics” always play a valuable role in science if only because they make us reconsider what we thought was settled and beyond dispute – especially when it’s based on reasonable, but yet unproven, assumptions. And most especially when those assumptions are implicit rather than explicit.

Want an example? How many papers do you see that have “Assuming a normal distribution…” in them? A lot, right? How many actually check the data to see if that really is the case? How many suggest alternate distributions? Not many. But if the distribution is, say, bimodal instead of normal (gausian), the stats needs must change if we want them to have any meaning. If you perform a sensitivity analysis on what several non-normal distrubtions do to the stats (especially the confidence intervals), you may begin to understand the issue. And when this is compounded (results of one or more papers “feeding into” another paper), it can rapidly result in an almost incomprehensible farce that in no way reflects reality. I would suggest that climate science is, if not in this territory already, then at least perilously close to it. And that’s a problem – how big a problem depends on how much longer it goes on before it’s “corrected” (assuming it needs to be, of course – I could be wrong, you know!).

Sod said “Tim Curtin has repeatedly reposted his claim, that measuring temperature at a single station can contradict the theory of global warming. he also is allowed to repeat the plain lie, that the IPCC expects all stations on earth to show warming.”

Well yes, when a theory states that radiative forcing by atmospheric CO2 which is everywhere, produces “global” warming, i.e. everywhere on the globe, and there are not just one but hundreds of places where there is no warming trend, eg not just Mauna Loa, Cape Grim, and Pt Barrow but Cape Otway and many many others, it is for the AGW “scientists” to explain which known unknown is able to offset that powerful radiative forcing (RF) from [CO2], now at about 1.7 Watts per sq. metre p.a.

Sod, clearly your brain has been addled by that RF beating down on you, even if your house and garden are only 1000 sq. metres, that is 1700 Watts a year frying your grey matter (if any). But then perhaps not, for if your electricity usage is anything like mine, at 17,700 kWh over the last 4 quarters, that puts out rather more heat, I think, at 65.6 kWh per sq metre of my 270 sq.m. house p.a, than the IPCC’s Radiative Forcing which is actually only 0.0000000194 kWh per sq.m. p.a.

I may well be wrong, and you will be the first to correct me , so please do – but if I am right, that explains why RF has virtually no influence on temperature.

As for the IPCC, its Chap.11 (AR4 WG1) states categorically that it is VERY LIKELY (90% certainty) that the total continental land surface area of the planet apart from Tuvalu (which will no longer be around) will warm this century. If that is a lie, it’s not mine, but yours and the IPCC’s.

In that same posting, SJT also wrote:
“Science is a formal process, with rules for speaking.”

Rules for speaking, my arse! It’s obvious to me that SJT’s understanding of science hasn’t evolved beyond the comic book level. Rules for speaking belong in theocratic dungeons. All praises to His Goreness! Real scientific discussion is not a pissing contest that’s won by the biggest dinosaur on the block, by the Neanderthal who screams the loudest, or by the Inquisitor who burns the most heretics.

Here’s my take on where Jennifer is coming from. Unlike certain Defenders of the Faith om this board, Jennifer doesn’t pretend to have access to the Cosmic Pipeline. Sometimes she posts a topic thread, simply because it interests her, and she wants to know what we think about it.

“Drop kick a denialist today. Never give them an inch ever. Then they might wake up from their vile dogmatic denialist religion.”

Yes, I don’t understand why we sceptics fail to be convinced considering how honest and credible you gory bleeders really are.
We might be stupid but treat us that way and you’re only treading on your own testicles.

“We need to get some broad based support,
to capture the public’s imagination…
So we have to offer up scary scenarios,
make simplified, dramatic statements
and make little mention of any doubts…
Each of us has to decide what the right balance
is between being effective and being honest.”
– Prof. Stephen Schneider,
Stanford Professor of Climatology,
lead author of many IPCC reports

It would seem Mooney is trying to drum up sales for his new book. I wouldn’t waste my time reading it. However I agree that the title of his first book has some elements of truth, e.g. the Bush administration’s opposition to stem cell research.

That is not true sod, I have replied to your accusations about Spain, Denmark and Germany; it’s true Germany did consider downsizing nuclear in 2000 but is now revisiting that green-sponsored folly and is pushing ahead with fossil and nuclear power plans.

i would love to see evidence of “Germany in particular is investing in nuclear power.” and (Germany) pushing ahead with … nuclear power plans.

TC: 1.Sod, clearly your brain has been addled by that RF beating down on you, even if your house and garden are only 1000 sq. metres, that is 1700 Watts a year frying your grey matter (if any). But then perhaps not, for if your electricity usage is anything like mine, at 17,700 kWh over the last 4 quarters, that puts out rather more heat, I think, at 65.6 kWh per sq metre of my 270 sq.m. house p.a, than the IPCC’s Radiative Forcing which is actually only 0.0000000194 kWh per sq.m. p.a.

Tim, I think it’s not sod’s brain that’s addled. Your calculations are all over the place. You mix units, you double units (watts per annum?? Watts already have the time unit built in!), and you get your orders of magnitude wrong.
Your average household electricity use is 2.02 kW.
The RF (by your figures), over 1000 m^2, is 1.7 kW. Not such a big difference.
HOWEVER, the RF is forcing over the whole surface of the planet. Every square metre, or inch. But humans do not occupy every single square metre of the planet. The amount of energy involved in the radiative processes far outweights that due to human electricity use. Your intellectual errors are on a par with those people who try to argue that CO2 emissions from human breathe outweigh those from automobiles.
Try again.

Well yes, when a theory states that radiative forcing by atmospheric CO2 which is everywhere, produces “global” warming, i.e. everywhere on the globe, and there are not just one but hundreds of places where there is no warming trend, eg not just Mauna Loa, Cape Grim, and Pt Barrow but Cape Otway and many many others, it is for the AGW “scientists” to explain which known unknown is able to offset that powerful radiative forcing (RF) from [CO2], now at about 1.7 Watts per sq. metre p.a.

now if a theory says, that capitalism is increasing global per capita income, it is for you folks to explain, why my neighbours income did actually fall last year!

As for the IPCC, its Chap.11 (AR4 WG1) states categorically that it is VERY LIKELY (90% certainty) that the total continental land surface area of the planet apart from Tuvalu (which will no longer be around) will warm this century. If that is a lie, it’s not mine, but yours and the IPCC’s.

that the temperature over a continent increases, does NOT imply, that temperature on every single thermometer on that continent will increase.

like a rise in unemployment does not imply, that unemployment will rise in every town.

and a fall of housing prices does not imply that every house is worth less.

Tim, your argument is showing a serious lack of understanding of the basics of science and statistics. it is on the level of a primary school kid.

1. “ It would seem Mooney is trying to drum up sales for his new book. I wouldn’t waste my time reading it. However I agree that the title of his first book has some elements of truth, e.g. the Bush administration’s opposition to stem cell research.”

Robert – It is not Mooney’s first book. In addition, the book was co-written by Sheril Kirshenbaum who is a marine biologist and author at Duke University. She is involved in conservation initiatives across levels of government and works to improve communication between scientists, policymakers, and the public.

She has also worked as a legislative science fellow on Capitol Hill with Senator Bill Nelson where she was involved in energy, climate, and ocean policy. She holds two MS degrees in Marine Biology and Marine Policy from the University of Maine and contributes to publications including New Scientist, Newsweek, The Huffington Post, and Science Progress, frequently writing about topics that bridge science and society from climate change to genetically modified foods.

Kirshenbaum served as a Fellow with the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History and as a Howard Hughes Research Fellow at Tufts University. She has composed reports to The Nature Conservancy and provided assistance on international protected area projects.

So where does that leave Australia’s cringe factor – rock doctor Plimer, who’s received the worst scientific reviews in this nation’s history!

“As for the IPCC, its Chap.11 (AR4 WG1) states categorically that it is VERY LIKELY (90% certainty) that the total continental land surface area of the planet apart from Tuvalu (which will no longer be around) will warm this century.”

As much as we both distrust the greenhouse theory, we should be serious. The temperature not increasing monotonically over each and every point within “the total continental land surface area” (sic.) does not contradict the quoted paragraph, nor any claim made by any serious AGW proponent that I am aware of.

The theory does not imply neither that the increase in temperatures should be continually up as a whole, nor that there shouldn’t be any local differences.

Rules for speaking, my arse! It’s obvious to me that SJT’s understanding of science hasn’t evolved beyond the comic book level. Rules for speaking belong in theocratic dungeons. All praises to His Goreness! Real scientific discussion is not a pissing contest that’s won by the biggest dinosaur on the block, by the Neanderthal who screams the loudest, or by the Inquisitor who burns the most heretics.

Skepticism requires evidence. If all you want here is a free for all for any ideas, not matter how nutty, fine. That’s not scepticism. In fact, I would dispute the title of this topic. It’s about smearing ignorance. Scepticism is something else entirely.

peterd: slow down a lot. It is the IPCC that states unambiguously (AR4 WG1 p.141 and elsewhere) that Radiative Forcing amounts to just 1.7 Watts per sq. metre a year, notice not Watts per hour, let alone kWh. Then 1.7 Watt for a year is 1.94064E-07 kWh per sq.m. (i.e. 1.7/(24*365)/1000).

My house’s (270 sq.m) annual average is not 2.02 kW, but 2.02 kW per hour, or 0.00748 kWh per sq.m. or 7.48 Watts per sq m. p.a. I think the latter figure is larger than 1.7 Watts per sq m. (0r1.94064E-07 KW) ! I hope this is clearer – and I apologies for any slips in my first post on this above.

Then you added: “HOWEVER, the RF is forcing over the whole surface of the planet” – yes of course, that is why there should be a rising (and only marginally variable given the same RF everywhere, independent as it is of latitude and longitude) temperature trend over the whole planet. You seem to think the RF is addtive by area. It is NOT. It is the same 1.7 watts for every sq. metre, no more no less whether that is in Mauna Loa or Timbuctu.

The local temperatures used for their gridding by NOAA and Hadley are despite their best efforts corrupted by the likes of you and me with our 7.8 watts per sq. metre of our abodes, quite large summed over London, Sydney, and even a hick village like Canberra.

It was striking as I drove into London 3 weeks ago that just c3 miles from the M25, at Slough, the external temperature reading on my car shot up from the 18 it had been all the way from Exeter (over 150 miles away) to 22 oC, and rising to 24 oC driving past Heathrow. Hence my AGW stands for Airport GW.

Anecdotal evidence of course. But why does the AR4 (ch 8) eschew all mention of
production except in the context of emissions of CO2, when energy usage accounts for at least 10 times as much per sq. metre of all modern cities. Recall that 51% of the world’s people now live in cities, with even cities like Johannesburg, Nairobi and Bombay embarking on massive home electrification programmes. But for the IPCC’s scientists and even worse, Australia’s economists like Garnaut and Clarke, such facts are immaterial – and by the likes of Bob Brown and Penny Wong, greatly to be deplored.

But is it really immaterial that the world’s electricity consumption was 15,441.2 billion kWh in 2004? The CO2 content was 27 billion tonnes of CO2 or 3.47 ppm. of which only c40% remained airborne because of the global biotic uplift of CO2 emissions. Those 1.4 ppm produced an extra RF of 0.02 watts per sq. metre.

Now do you really believe that has more warming effect than 15,441 billion kWh? Recall that 1.7 watts of RF per sq. metre p.a. equates to about 936 million Watts for the total surface area of the Globe. So you want us to believe that those Watts outweigh in heating potential the 15,441 billion kWh of world electricity consumption in 2004?

Oh dear, fried sod again: “that the temperature over a continent increases, does NOT imply, that temperature on every single thermometer on that continent will increase’. If not why not, when the IPCC says the predominant cause (95% certainty) of all warming shown by every thermometer everywhere is rising [CO2]. They are the ones who rule out any impact from sunspots or energy usage – and ignore the flat trends at amuan Loa et al ad infinitum. The IPCC is the outfit that does not undertand its own theory or that its evidence perverts the concept of averages. It is enough for James Hansen that even if one million temp. readings show no rising trend, but just one does, then of course the Mean rises. The IPCC nowhere displays any statistical evaluation of its temp. data – because none of its 2,500 authors and editors are up to it, least of all the Australian contingent represented by Karoly.

I’ll stick my neck out here. I happen to like Ian Plimer and have read both of his books with interest. I acknowledge that he doesn’t always come across well and that Heaven and Earth may have some errors in it but I think that generally ,most criticisms have come from hysterical die hards that either havn’t read the book or only read it with the intention of picking it to pieces from the outset.

Luke

from what I’ve seen, commentators have poo pooed something like 68 out of 2311 references in the book. That means that they could find no fault with over 95% of what Plimer wrote.
Have you or Sod or any of the other AGWers even read the book? Please answer that question.

peterd: slow down a lot. It is the IPCC that states unambiguously (AR4 WG1 p.141 and elsewhere) that Radiative Forcing amounts to just 1.7 Watts per sq. metre a year, notice not Watts per hour, let alone kWh. Then 1.7 Watt for a year is 1.94064E-07 kWh per sq.m. (i.e. 1.7/(24*365)/1000).

Actually Tim, I was under the impression the RF was 1.7w/m2. Continuous. Work it out again on that basis, and I think you’ll find that the RF is much higher then electricity consumption – at least an order of magnitude, if not several, IIRC.
However, your comments about Airport GW are quite apt, as Pielke shows quite clearly in this blog post:http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2009/08/29/remarkable-admission-by-james-annan-on-the-klotzbach-et-al-2009-paper/
where he documents (with references) a paper showing the equivilent RF forcing of over 10W/m2 from anthropogenic landscape changes (UHI, in other words). With other papers reporting up to 20W/m2, or more than 10 times the RF of CO2, just how much this is downplayed by IPCC is, to put it mildly, somewhat disturbing.

and while i drove along Munich airport this summer, temperature dropped by 2°C. i have just contradicted the possibility of airports effecting temperature! (i am using the Curtin (TM) method of scientific analysis)

The IPCC is the outfit that does not undertand its own theory or that its evidence perverts the concept of averages. It is enough for James Hansen that even if one million temp. readings show no rising trend, but just one does, then of course the Mean rises.

the mean would basically NOT rise. (a 1°C increase on one thermometer among one million would increase the average temperature by 0.000001°C)
the only person around here, who doesn t understand averages is obviously you.

Neil – thanks for your as ever thoughtful comments. I interpreted the AR4WG1 Table at p.141 and text on p.140 when it puts the RF at “W m^-2″ as being indeed W/sq.metre (just as it puts CO2 emissions at p.139 as “2.7 GtC yr^-1″, i.e. in layman’s language 2.7 GtC p.a. or GtC/yr. They choose to use the “^-2″ format to show how scientific they are. I therefore stand by my claim using only the data in the Table 2.1 at page 141 that given the data there for the change in ppm from 1998 (366) to 2005 (379), and the associated increase in RF as stated of 13%, to 1.66 in 2005, that the increase in RF from 1.47 W m^-2 in 1998 to 1.66 in 2005 implies that the realtionship between dCO2 in ppm and dRF is of the order of 0.0147 W ^-2 per one ppm. That is ludicrously tiny in relation to the warming potential of all forms of energy consumption.

I believe therefore my calculations are correct, that the RF is a tiny fraction of the much larger “forcing” from global electrical energy consumption of no less than 15,441 billion kWh in 2004. The same disproportion applies of course to energy usage in transport and all other sectors.

Truly, if I am right – and it begins to look as though I could be! – we have in the IPCC a far more gargantuan fraud than even Bernie Madoff could have imagined.

I have not yet read Pielke’s – but prima facie it confirms my position.

sod. your brain has shrunk even since your previous. When I use 17700 kWh p.a. according to my supplier, that means I use 2.02 kW per hour on average over the year. KW on its own is a meaningless construction in this context. That is why you never see it in print. Get back to your Stasi mates at PIK.

Tim, no no no!! Power is the RATE at which energy is being used (or produced). One watt is one Joule per second. Get it? It is meaningless to say “2.02 kW per hour” (unless you are talking about the rate of power change). Your rate of energy use is 2.02 kW, as I wrote. I.e., 2,020 Joules per second. You really need to go back to high school and study physics. It is small wonder that so many scientists have such a low opinion of “sceptics”, if this is the level of “science” they produce.
The rest of comments I will leave now; I have no time tonight, but I hope for better tomorrow.

Lukey “What an amazing piece – ‘More Smearing of Scientific Scepticism” – and on here we have an endless parade of goons being as vile and personal as possible about Australian scientists they’ve never met. ”

When Raupach apologizes in public for his lies, I will stop being as vile and as personal as possible about him.

When will BOM scientists apologize for the High Quality Temperature data series fraud and fix up their website so as not to grossly mislead the public?

Tim, further: power (energy/time) times time equals energy. Your total energy (kWh, or whatever units you fancy) is the product of 1.7 W/m^2 and time. Why on earth have you divided 1.7 Watts by (24*365)? Your whole line of reasoning looks more absurd the more I look at it.

peterd: look, do talk to my electricity company ACTEW. It says I used 17700 kWh over the last year; dividing that by the number of hours in a year yields 2.02 kW per hour. I see no need to change the unit. To say I used 2.02 kW is meaningless, unless you specify over what period. Yes you are right about Watts in terms of joules per second, but so what?

It is not me but the Almighty, aka IPCC, that states the radiative forcing of rising [CO2] to be 1.7 Watts m^-2 PER ANNUM (or 1.7 Watts/sq m.) So following your advice, I turn that into an hourly rate of 0.000194 m^-2. Why not? It seems to be a lot smaller than my electricity consumption of 7.4835 Watts m^-2.

More than averagely challenged sod: So I use 2.02 kW of electricity, costing just 25/60/60 cents. That’s a great help to my budgeting in these hard times.

But using your method, our annual electricity usage of 17700 kWh means we used 155 million kilowatts over the year (not 2.02 as you have it). That means we used 574267 kW per sq. metre of our 270 sq m., which in Watts is

574,266,666.67 W m^-2

and again rather larger than the IPCC’s radiative forcing of just 1.66 W m^-2 p.a.

I’m sorry Petard but there has been some confusion. Taking the units at face value, you would of course be correct and as I am a Physics teacher(not a very good one at this stage, one of those teaching outside his field), I have been confused myself over this issue.

However, doing the calculations you get 2.02kWh/h which should mean 2.02kW except that power consumption for a quarter or a year is actually calculated as kWh multiplied by the number of hours. Thus technically, Tim’s annual consumption was 17,700kWh^2. It’s just a convenient naming thing by the power companies.

You say Tim’s house uses 2,020 joules per second average, times that by 3600 and you get 7272000 joules in one hour. This = 7272kWh which if you multiply by the number of hours in a year gives you 62 mWh, nothing like 17,700 kWh.

Tim, how much of that 15,441 billion kWh of energy usage was actually converted to heat? Wouldn’t that be the only contribution to the “forcing” you mentioned?

I believe therefore my calculations are correct, that the RF is a tiny fraction of the much larger “forcing” from global electrical energy consumption of no less than 15,441 billion kWh in 2004. The same disproportion applies of course to energy usage in transport and all other sectors.

As you can see, there are roughly 3 orders of magnitude difference, and it’s in favour of the GH RF.

However, as a guest post on Pilke Snr’s blog here:http://climatesci.org/2009/05/05/have-changes-in-ocean-heat-falsified-the-global-warming-hypothesis-a-guest-weblog-by-william-dipuccio/
shows, it appears that the models have missed something – we are not seeing the upper OHC changes they suggest we should be. In fact, we seem to be seeing trends in the opposite direction – a major problem, IMO, that shows just how basic our understanding of the coupled non-linear chaotic system that climate appears to be really is. Whileever we have such discrepancies between the “leading” theory and reality, I am more than a little concerned that we are changing our energy supply system on the basis of such theory.
Perhaps it’s just the engineer in me, but we really need a lot more data and a much better understanding of the system before we start down that road – let alone some of the geo-engineering that is currently being touted as a “stop-gap” solution.

Thanks Louis. And also to Derek; you are right about the Heat content, totally ignored by the IPCC. I have data on that on my laptop and will give it next time I’m here.

Neil, re your calculations in 2nd para, should we not Multiply by Hours p.a. to get the absolute no. of kW of electricity Consumption?

I agree with your 870E12, i.e 870,000 billion Watts for the aggregate CO2 forcing of 1.7 per sq. m. for the total global surface area. But I obtain the following for World Electricity Consumption in 2004 in absolute Watts:

With respect, I think my version is more consistent with the Pielke et al findings!

And the reason is that the world’s electricity output is huge, while the CO2 output from generation thereof is tiny, especially after taking out solar, hydro, and wind, at only 7.4 billion tonnes of carbon, or 27 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2004 (that is

0.00047765

tonnes of carbon per kWh).

BTW, the energy data I cite is for Consumption of electricity, so thermal efficiency is inapplicable, unlike when we refer to the Heat generated in the process of generating electricity, hence those cooling towers we see on SBS and ABC belching out water vapour from the cooling, athough David Karoly and Will Steffen clearly believe that is CO2, since those pictures are evidently their preferred backdrops for their regular appearances thereon.

Am I right that your post was composed before my previous went up? (September 19th, 2009 at 10:49 am). The revised figures it contains derive actual Watts per sq. metre p.a. for my house at
574,266,666.67 W m^-2

All best Neil, and this has been most helpful in clarifying a slippery set of numbers.

The problem is not so much the incompleteness of the theory but the whole philosophical approach to science – I received an email from a retired geologist who pointed out that the present generation, academics included, don’t seem to understand the scientific method, and which I think I have identified as the Lyellian mode of thinking, started by Charles Lyell two centuries ago in England. It’s essentially the Platonists or deductionists who have taken control of science. This group believes that reasonable discussion and consensus can determine scientific truth. The school we came from rejects that and insists on empirical tests to falsify a theory.

Given that AGW has been comprehensively falsified but that it’s adherents can’t accept this refutation, points out that we are not dealing with science per se but a sophisticated belief couched in scientific jargon. The Lukian reactions here are then instances of quite serious cognitive dissonance.

Quite frankly I don’t know how to counter this – empirical refutation seems like water running off a duck’s back with this lot. Debate doesn’t sway them either, and as they are also the majority and in control of government, universities and schools, and the mainstream media, then things don’t augur too well for the future at all.

And the latest economic statistics for the US on http://www.usagold.com/amk/disturbingtrends2009exec.html suggests the US might be heading for a Weimar Republic type of depression. Given that possibility plus the relentness pursuit of the ETS by the ALP and fellow travellers in Australia, I suspect we are in for interesting times.

Neil, re your calculations in 2nd para, should we not Multiply by Hours p.a. to get the absolute no. of kW of electricity Consumption?

No Tim – you are billed on a power * time basis. That is, you use 2kW for two hours, and get charged for 4 kW/h. So to turn your kW/h p.a. into an average power consumption for each hour, divide by number of hours – in the example above, we divide 4kW/h by 2 hours and get 2kW, which is what we started with.

BTW, the energy data I cite is for Consumption of electricity, so thermal efficiency is inapplicable

Consumption of electricity is usually metered at the customers premises, so you don’t pay for losses in transmission etc. In terms of heating the planet, I think we must consider how much heat we are releasing into the environment, so taking the thermal efficiency of the plant into account (which is likely the largest “loss” in going from flame to appliance, as it were) is appropriate, I think – besides, I’m inflating the electricity usage by 2.5 times in your favour!

The revised figures it contains derive actual Watts per sq. metre p.a. for my house at
574,266,666.67 W m^-2

Tim this is obviously absurd – 500MW per sq.m??? You would need the equivilent of a large power station to supply just one room in your house! Your usage would be 500,000 kw/h every hour per sq. metre! With a 200 sq. m house, you’d have consumed over 100 million kw/h every hour! Hope your bill isn’t for *that* much electricity – especially at retail pricing

Louis Hissink wrote:

Given that AGW has been comprehensively falsified but that it’s adherents can’t accept this refutation, points out that we are not dealing with science per se but a sophisticated belief couched in scientific jargon. The Lukian reactions here are then instances of quite serious cognitive dissonance.

I think it’s probably going a bridge too far to suggest that AGW has been falsified. While there are without doubt a number of (climate) scientists who have crossed the line and become political activists (eg Hansen), the theory itself is quite reasonable and has much empirical data to back it up. However, it relies on the (tacit) assumption that “all else remains equal” – but as every empiricist knows, in complex systems this is rarely the case, and doubly so for coupled non-linear systems, and doubly so again where they exhibit chaotic behaviour. It may be the case that climate is unpredictable even in theory, except perhaps in the broadest possible terms (ie not “policy useful” if you like). I would not personally stake much on current predictions, for reasons I’ve outlined before.

Quite frankly I don’t know how to counter this – empirical refutation seems like water running off a duck’s back with this lot. Debate doesn’t sway them either, and as they are also the majority and in control of government, universities and schools, and the mainstream media, then things don’t augur too well for the future at all.

It’s certainly a concern, I agree, and I don’t know how to counter it either. My main concern WRT what happens in the future is not so much what we look set to do to our economy – it might hurt, but should be reversable – but instead what the results of the backlash will be if, as and when the general population decides they’ve been duped. The consequences for science in general seem quite alarming – we may end up putting ourselves into a new dark age because of lack of belief that science tells us the truth, and makes our lives better. Evidence will not help you in the face of an angry mob intent on getting revenge!

The revised figures it contains derive actual Watts per sq. metre p.a. for my house at
574,266,666.67 W m^-2

Tim this is obviously absurd – 500MW per sq.m??? You would need the equivilent of a large power station to supply just one room in your house! Your usage would be 500,000 kw/h every hour per sq. metre! With a 200 sq. m house, you’d have consumed over 100 million kw/h every hour! Hope your bill isn’t for *that* much electricity – especially at retail pricing

Oops! My mistake – missed the “p.a.”. Even so, this number appears to be larger than your electricity consumption for the year of 17MW/h, so there is clearly an error somewhere.

Mooney is a child. He’s just a young kid really. And yet his nonsense has been taken up as a sort of international meme. We keep hearing about the Republican war on science over here in Australia. The Australian (ie the newspaper) war on science. All stupid-talk but its odd that this was taken up on the basis of this know-nothing youngster.

Thanks Neil for pointing out what may well be my errors, but I don’t give up without a fight!

Neil: I agree with you re billing per KWh, but that is not what we are talking about, which is the absolute TOTAL consumption over a year.

According to Wiki, “Energy in watt hours is the muliplication of power in watts and time in hours.” So to get energy usage over the year we multiply the hourly rate by (365*24).

ACTEW told me my average daily 3Q usage was 90 kWh, so ignoring that was winter, over a year that is 32,850 KWh, or 287.766 million KW p.a. But although I am billed per KWh, my actual usage in Watts – in Watt years if you like – was 287.766 Billion Watts p.a.

That means 1.07568 BILLION watts per sq metre of my 270 m^2 abode over the year. That is an order of magnitude more than the IPCC’s piffling Radiative Forcing of 1.7 Watts per sq. metre p.a.

Neil: my turn to say “oops”, but my home still appears to heat more than the IPCC’s planet (thank goodness).

My average daily consumption was 90 kWh in the last quarter (despite AGW). That is an hourly average of 3.75 kWh. and 32,850 kWh over the year at that 3Q rate. That is 32,850,000 Watt hours, which is 121,666.6667 WattHours per sq.metre of a 270 sq.metre dwelling, or 2027.777778 Watts per sq. metre, as against the IPCC’s Radiative Forcing of 1.7 W m^ -2.

G’day Neil, my concern is not so much WRT a backlash against scientists because most people are aware that there is a skeptical voice out there plus there are lots of different types of science. My big worry is when people realize that the entire environmental movement deliberately set out to use the fear generated by AGW hysteria when they knew that it might not be true, for their own agenda, which is forcing the world to use non-nuclear alternative energy etc etc.

If everybody turned their backs wholesale on environmentalism it could very well undo all of the good work that has been done and remove any barriers to the wholesale raping of the planet by big corporations.

Remember, CO2 emissions are just one part of the fossil fuel problem and even if CO2 isn’t a pollutant, most everything else that gets produced from burning fossil fuels is.

1. eg when you say “if everybody turned their backs wholesale on environmentalism it could very well undo all of the good work that has been done and remove any barriers to the wholesale raping of the planet by big corporations”. Nobody in “my team” is asking for that, environmentalism is admirable when it addresses real pollution, eg SO2 (too much of that in most wines!). I briefly worked for a big corporation in the mid-70s, it did more to raise incomes in Africa than total global UK aid, eg the Kenana Sugar scheme in Sudan on which I worked, providing employment for many thousands, and sugar for the likes of Bin Laden et al. Kenana soaks up more CO2 per hectare p.a. than any other project you might care to name – but without [CO2] it would produce no sugar at all.

2. Then you said “Remember, CO2 emissions are just one part of the fossil fuel problem and even if CO2 isn’t a pollutant, most everything else that gets produced from burning fossil fuels is”. What, even your computer usage fuelled by same ff? Do take note that on average nearly 60% of all ff CO2 emissions every year are taken up by NEW sugar, wheat, rice, wheat, apples, grapes, roses, production (see http://www.globalcarbonproject.org, or yours truly on “CO2 and Food Production” in Energy & Environment, October 2009, just out). If Copenhagen succeeds, it will reduce world food production to the 1970 level.

You err in one important respect – oil, coal etc are not fossil fuels.

They are surface seepages of hydrocarbons from the Earth’s mantle to the Earth’s surface, and according to Tommy Gold, the products of a rather large deep hot biosphere.

While writing this thought it suddenly occurred to me that this explanation is sufficient for natural gas, but as I am also a diamond geologist, I have always wondered why diamond can exist on the surface of the Earth, since it is clearly metastable, and hence while black coal can be explained by the replacement of vegetable matter by carbon from subterranean exhalations of methane, replenishment of oil fields is another. I suddenly realise that our understanding of “pressure” is incomplete.

Tim, you’re correct, I do get carried away at times and am also prone to sweeping generalizations. Of course I don’t think anyone here would be environmental vandals, I was thinking more along the lines of a resurgence of “gas guzzling”V8’s and rampant logging of rainforests etc.. I should have said CO2 emissions are perceived to be part of the problem, I don’t think higher CO2 levels would make much of a difference.

As for corporations, sweeping generalizations again, sorry.

Louis, I’ve read about this idea only recently on this site and find the concept interesting and compelling. I’ve read that there is twice as much water in the mantle as on the Earth’s surface so the idea of hydrocarbons forming in the mantle is not much of a stretch. Of course I was using fossil fuels as a generic term and didn’t mean to comment on their origins.

Archaean diamonds, wow. When I was at Uni I was “playing” with my molecular model sets(I bought 2 so I could make dodecane) and discovered that there were 2 allotropes of diamond, one based on the chair conformation of cyclohexane and the other based on the boat conformation. I can’t remember which one but it dawned on me that one of them looked just like a distorted version of graphite but with sigma bonds where the resonance electrons should be. I found out then that diamond can turn into graphite.

Louis, does it make any difference which allotrope it is as far as rate of equilibration as from memory, the structure of diamond found in many textbooks would require a more complex structural change than the one I’m thinking of.

“If Copenhagen succeeds, it will reduce world food production to the 1970 level.”

This is fanciful stuff and incredibly simplistic. Ongoing agronomic and genetic improvements are conveniently forgotten.

Impact of rainfall – might be an overwhelming factor as drying of sub-tropics is showing. cO2 ill do nothing is other factors are limiting – it’s not magic dust.

FACE (free air CO2 experiments) don’t show near the yield increases that laboratory trials do.

Savanna woodlands might become thickets as woody C3s are preferred over C4 grasses. Interesting to see the red leaves of Eucalypts at savanna free air sites – red tinges – but the acacias are fine. So C/N ratios and P absorption affected. Acacias seem to have an edge. One experiment – but hiow little we know.

Extra CO2 makes some plants more frost prone.

You don’t get balanced arguments from denialists. A lesson for your class !

Derek, as ever I agree with most of what you say, many thanks. But I think with respect you are not quite right when you say: “I was thinking more along the lines of a resurgence of “gas guzzling V8’s and rampant logging of rainforests etc.”

Even V8s help feed the world’s people, given that 60% of their emissions end up as CO2 producing extra food and other useful stuff, whether in the form of crops fish and livestock, or Timber for building, paper for our books, etc.

Ironically, the Greens with their campaigns against forestry in effect espouse use of cement and iron/steel for building etc all of which involve massive generation of CO2. My cousins still live in what used to be the Abbots of Glastonbury’s manor farm at Meare, where the roof beams have just recently been carbon dated back to 1227.

Not only that, I worked for many years in Nigeria and PNG, where there has been little or no ‘rampant logging’ of rainforests etc. Try Google Earth for the main logging areas in PNG, namely SE Western Province (Wawoi-Guavi) and across the prov. border, SW Gulf, namely Turama. They have been logged for 20 and 30 years respectively. Show me if you can the logged areas. I was there in 2007. Sustainable logging involves taking out only the marketable trees per ha., with dbh of 50-60 cm, why would you do anything else, as the Chinese wont buy logs with less than 50-60 cm dbh? On average, at any given point in time a hectare only has a couple of trees with that dbh – but in a few years there will be a couple more ready for harvesting. That is a concept deliberately suppressed by the Greens.

Thus Greenpeace with their habitual dishonesty will never admit there is something known as sustainable logging, namely at around 0.7 cu.metre per hectare pa. Turama was originally managed by the UK’s Inchcape, whose forest bloke was the late Ian Grassie, worthy of a Nobel far before Gore. Both Turama and W-G are now operated by the Chinese Malaysian firm Rimbunan Hijao. With their usual racism, Greenpeace (and Chatham House) deem all forestry managed by this firm to be ‘illegal’ or worse, yet in PNG alone it has been in business for more than 30 years,with no sign of resource depletion and employing 10,000 PNGers in its operations. And that is what sticks in the craw of the Greens. They believe the kanakas should stick to living in the trees from whence they came, and not aspire to a Green lifestyle with all its modern appliances – and computers. I worked in PNG for over 12 years, I know of what I speak.

FACT: more timber is logged in white OECD countries (c28) than in ALL (all non-white) other countries of the world put together. Greenpeace and its affiliates (WWF et al) are the most racist organisations since the pre-Mandela government of South Africa. I can document this in spades.

1. You quote me as saying “If Copenhagen succeeds, it will reduce world food production to the 1970 level.” and add “This is fanciful stuff and incredibly simplistic. Ongoing agronomic and genetic improvements are conveniently forgotten”. No they are not, see my E&E paper, I will send it to you. What is says inter alia is that rising [CO2] is a NECESSARY condition for increasing yields from agronomic and genetic improvements. The Wong-Garnaut target for reductions in increases in [CO2] to nil from now for ever means that CSIRO’s agronomic efforts should be terminated NOW, a step too far for a gormless bureaucrat like Luke.

2. Luke added “Impact of rainfall – might be an overwhelming factor as drying of sub-tropics is showing. CO2 will do nothing if other factors are limiting – it’s not magic dust”. If there is AGW, it will lead to increased evaporation, and therefore increased precipitation, as even the imbecilic IPCC sometimes admits.

3. “FACE (free air CO2 experiments) don’t show near the yield increases that laboratory trials do”. But they are still very substantial (+ 10%).

4. “Savanna woodlands might become thickets as woody C3s are preferred over C4 grasses. Interesting to see the red leaves of Eucalypts at savanna free air sites – red tinges – but the acacias are fine. So C/N ratios and P absorption affected. Acacias seem to have an edge. One experiment – but how little we know.” A light at the end of the tunnel – acacias are brilliant at nitrogen fixation, but you wouldn’t want to know about that would you? (I saw that in operation in Northern Nigeria, and helped to steer some EU funds in that direction from 1983-1988).

5. “Extra CO2 makes some plants more frost prone” – but you believe there will never ever be any frosts again!

Never believe all you hear on the ABC! Actually even at the ANU I have heard that cattle raising in Amazonia has declined because forest soils do not produce good grazing (that was part of the problem with the great British Socialist Government’s groundnuts debacle in Tanganyika in the late 1940s – forest soils tend to be thin, and reducing the canopy reduces rain, so no big deal).

Part of the Greenpeace et al racism is that they believe all brown people are stupid, especially in Indonesia, so they do forest clearing just for the hell of it, rather than because they see they can raise their standard of living more by not watching moribund old growth trees do very little for them rather than instead switching to oil palm or other food crops, ALL of which uplift more CO2 per hectare per annum than said moribund virtually dead trees.

Jennifer, there is no scepticism here. It reminds me of the time when I was younger and someone started telling another person at the table about ‘crystals’ and their amazing powers. I could’t believe it, the other person did not question anything at all about what they were hearing, but accepted it all uncritically.

SJT, there is truth in what you say ““Abiotic Oil’ ? Wow.”, I did not disagree with Louis’ correction but then, unlike many on this blog, I have no expertise in that or any other field covered on this site. I have also pondered the question myself on occasion so I am open to the possibility. I’m completely with you on the whole crystals thing but then some things seem foolishly obvious to the rational, skeptical(in a generalist sense)mind, whereas other things may not be so clear cut.

As an example, my lab manager is also an amateur fossil hunter and has several rooms full of specimens from the Narracorte caves. They have a number of Thylacaleo(?) fossils and found a nearly complete skeleton with extra bones that suggested a tail. When they reported this to the experts, they were told in no uncertain terms that this was ridiculous and that there was no evidence for such a thing. Well since then a skeleton has been found with an unmistakable tail thus vindicating their claim.

My point is that we have often been told by experts that a thing isn’t so but which has later on been found to be correct, so I’m not yet ready to close the book on abiotic oil.

By the way, I have been following the debate on abiotic oil on this site and have found ALL of the contributions very helpful.

PS, if the crystals thing turns out to be true one day I’ll happily admit that I was wrong.

My average daily consumption was 90 kWh in the last quarter (despite AGW). That is an hourly average of 3.75 kWh. and 32,850 kWh over the year at that 3Q rate. That is 32,850,000 Watt hours, which is 121,666.6667 WattHours per sq.metre of a 270 sq.metre dwelling, or 2027.777778 Watts per sq. metre, as against the IPCC’s Radiative Forcing of 1.7 W m^ -2.

Well Tim, at least we are going in the right direction
But to get it into the same units as the GHG RF, we take the 3.7kW, and divide by the area, which as you say is 270 sq.m and get 13.7W/sq. m. Of course, this is only your house – it doesn’t include the land area, which we do for the GHG RF. So, assuming your land is, say 700 sq. m, we would be down to 5.2W/ sq. m. However, that’s not all of it either, because there are parks, roads, vacant lots, rivers, lakes etc etc – people, after all, have not covered the entire surface of the planet with houses (not even all the land area!). So in terms of heating the planet, we should look, as you initially did, at total consumption and total area – and when we do, as I posted previously, we are looking at several order of magnitude less.

Derek Smith wrote:

If everybody turned their backs wholesale on environmentalism it could very well undo all of the good work that has been done and remove any barriers to the wholesale raping of the planet by big corporations.

Yes, that is indeed a concern – one I take very seriously, BTW. I think you are wrong though, about it not affecting science in general – an angry mob is rarely rational.

SJT wrote:

Jennifer, there is no scepticism here.

Isn’t it strange that Jennifer, like many of the so-called “sceptic” blogs, let’s pretty much anyone post – even those like yourself who are “believers” and tend to be on the abusive side. Meanwhile, at the “believer” blogs like RC, Tamino’s “Open Mind” (ironic name, really) and so on, even those like Pielke’s – who are published academics – get comments edited and/or dropped. Hell, even Lucia – who is a “luke-warmer” – complains that comments are edited! And it’s not just abuse that gets cut – polite, pointed questions on the actual science get “moderated” into oblivion, while those who spout the “party line” are allowed to post ad-hom attacks! If you don’t believe me, try it yourself. A truely “open mind” and really real “real scientists” don’t act like RC and Tamino, they act like Jennifer, Pielke Jnr and yes, even Steve McIntyre – they may snip off-topic and/or abusive comments, but serious questions about the actual science are entertained, and data and methods are king. It’s quite telling, the various attitudes – and yes, I know that doesn’t mean the actual science reflects these peoples attitudes, but hey, I’m just on the outside looking in, and like most people (the “rest of us” that need to be convinced, remember) my initial reactions affect how I view the rest of my interactions with those people. So it is an important aspect, regardless of who is “right”.

The real issue is that science has been hijacked, yet again, for political purposes. It happened two centuries ago with Lyell and the Whigs, and it’s happening again. Given the price of gold and the Baltic Dry index heading south again, I am preparing myself for another depression. The problem is that these government created economic disasters then allow the more extreme politicians the opportunity to get control and “save us”.

Actually the AGW debate has been put into historical perspective by James Rust-

“ARYAN PHYSICS REVISITED

James H. Rust [jrust@bellsouth.net] writes: “Herewith is an essay I have been thinking of writing for years because of the unprovoked name calling by climate alarmists:

For more than a quarter century controversy has embroiled the scientific community over whether carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas formed from burning fossil fuels, is causing increased global temperatures with catastrophic consequences. This is also called anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Many supporters of AGW are adamant in their views and refuse to acknowledge the existence of scientists or the science that refutes their views. Some advocates could be described as self-assured, arrogant, and using unflattering terms to describe those who disagree with them.

The possible threat of AGW spawned research funds from the United States government to study climate science. An excellent paper by Joanne Nova titled “Climate Money” traces the way money was spent from 1989 to 2008 in the amount of $79 billion. Research supporting AGW was able to generate more money; so the financing system fed upon itself. If initial research proved AGW did not exist, future funding would have ceased. Yet to be reported, the United States economic stimulus funds for 2009 will allocate billions of dollars spent in anticipation of AGW.”

Rest on John Ray’s Greenie Watch for Friday 18 September.

We are watching one group of people pillaging the taxpayers for specious reasons and hopefully the US Tea Parties will wake enough to stop the herd from self destruction. I am not too sure about Australia, and the Europeans, well, I suggest they learn Russian.

Isn’t it strange that Jennifer, like many of the so-called “sceptic” blogs, let’s pretty much anyone post – even those like yourself who are “believers” and tend to be on the abusive side. Meanwhile, at the “believer” blogs like RC, Tamino’s “Open Mind” (ironic name, really) and so on, even those like Pielke’s – who are published academics – get comments edited and/or dropped. Hell, even Lucia – who is a “luke-warmer” – complains that comments are edited! And it’s not just abuse that gets cut – polite, pointed questions on the actual science get “moderated” into oblivion, while those who spout the “party line” are allowed to post ad-hom attacks! If you don’t believe me, try it yourself. A truely “open mind” and really real “real scientists” don’t act like RC and Tamino, they act like Jennifer, Pielke Jnr and yes, even Steve McIntyre – they may snip off-topic and/or abusive comments, but serious questions about the actual science are entertained, and data and methods are king.

Steve McIntyre won’t allow a lot of discussion on the basic science, and doesn’t audit the denialist garbage. Pielke Snr doesn’t allow comments at all. Jennifer is just creating the appearance of a ‘debate’, which is more than much of what is posted here as topics deserves. Creationists have to do the same thing. If there is no debate, they just become irrelevant.

Tim Curtin chose it as the right place, for a comparison between the CO2 forcing in his garden with the electricity use of his house.
even when we ignore his dozens of errors, his approach still reamains utterly unsceintific (the number he produces is completeley irrelevant) and non-sceptic. (he demonstrated multiple times, that he will except every bizarre result, as long as it fits into his believes)

other people brought up abiotic oil. “aryan phyiscs” is compared to AGW. Greenpeace et al racism.

in short, “Scientific Scepticism” is NOT smeared. what we saw here is a clear demonstration that it is impossibble to smear such nonsense.

the only sceptic who showed some scepticism under this topic was Neil. i am glad that there are a few voices of reason in the denilaist camp. thanks for writing comments that are worth reading!

well, the topic is quite apt – “in short, “Scientific Scepticism” is NOT smeared. what we saw here is a clear demonstration that it is impossibble to smear such nonsense”, which is still smearing us.</i<

Ah, the standard lefty position of denying any responsibility for your actions, and blaming us for our smearing.

At least you seem a good graduate of the Frankfurt school.

look Louis. if i would introduce you to a scientific audience as a proponent of abiotic oil, a person not believing in plate tetonics and in earthquakes being “thunderbolts”, you would be the laughing stock of the lot.

Steve McIntyre won’t allow a lot of discussion on the basic science, and doesn’t audit the denialist garbage.

Steve Mc wants, according to his postings, to focus on individual bits of the “evidence” – but only the stuff he calls “main-stream”. That is, the stuff that IPCC present. I’m sure you’d be the first to suggest that the “denialist garbage” is most definately NOT main-stream. This seems to me like a good idea for an “audit” site – there’s no point in looking to audit Svensmark for example, if it’s got no traction and is all but ignored by the “main-stream” people advocating change. The evidence that needs to be audited is, quite simply, the evidence that is being put forward!

Pielke Snr doesn’t allow comments at all.

No, he doesn’t – he does, however, offer many people a guest post. Pielke Jnr positively encourages an open and honest debate, focused not so much on the actual science, but on how it interfaces with politics. Hardly surprising since that’s his job.

Jennifer is just creating the appearance of a ‘debate’, which is more than much of what is posted here as topics deserves.

Jennifers blog is similar to WUWT – wide ranging topics written for everyday people who have an interest.

Creationists have to do the same thing. If there is no debate, they just become irrelevant.

So that’s why you refuse to debate, then? Just like Hansen, you think that if you ignore the nasty people, they’ll go away? You certainly seem to think that pointing and laughing at people who really are examining the science is somehow a defense against them.

Why don’t you take up the challange SJT? Try writing an on-topic, polite, “hairy” question on RC and see if it gets past moderation. Then try it at Tamino. Then CA. Then Lucia. Your RC and Tamino posts, if they show up at all, will be heavily edited to make you look like a fool. CA & Lucia, OTOH, will not dump the post as long as it meets blog rules – if the question is good enough, you might even start a new thread! Report back with links to your comments – even better, post a copy of them here as well.

Or perhaps, if you are so sure of yourself, you could answer Steve Mc’s request for an engineering level study on the AGW evidence – all assumptions explicitly stated, all likely variations noted, all decisions with written justifications (with extracts and references). Sure, it would need to run to several thousand pages, but it certainly looks like no-one has been able to produce such a document yet. How can this be, SJT? How can a large proportion of the worlds govts be moving to change the whole basis of their energy systems without such a document? It would be completely unacceptable for pretty much anything else – in govt or for a private company. Bear in mind, I’m not suggesting that such a document would need to be correct in every detail, but something that lays everything out in such a fashion would be invaluable to “the cause”, don’t you think? Odd then, that it doesn’t seem to exist, innit?

Odd too, that in Steve Mc’s latest series of posts, he documents – once again – that a paper published in a journal whose policies specifically state that data must be made available to any interested reader as a condition of publication, is being deliberately and willfully withheld by the author. Why would you do that? Perhaps it’s so that by the time you have to relent and make the data available, “the team” can suggest that they’ve “moved on”, and that it “doesn’t matter”. Of course, the press release over-represents the findings, but it’s being done for the “right” reason, innit? Does not this sort of behaviour raise a red flag for you? Doesn’t it concern you that these people are distorting the science to suit their agenda? I mean, even if you agree with their agenda, that’s just asking for trouble, innit? Sorry, but I just don’t “get” this sort of behaviour – it’s political, it’s anti-science, it’s… it’s just bloody amazing that they get away with it, frankly. The whole “denialist” side is actually growing, in large part, because of this sort of thing! Why don’t you call them on it?

Dear all, I have no claims to perfection. Could sod kindly explain that if as Wiki says, one Watt equals one joule (J) of energy per second, what does the IPCC’s RF of 1.7 Watts per sq. metre p.a. mean?

Perhaps you should do some homework – there is far more opposition to plate tectonics, fossil fuel etc than you seem aware of. You are simply a gullible supporter of institutionalised science hiding behand a pen name, to boot.

And I am not being laughed at by the way, perhaps among the crowd you associate but as I said before, do some research on the topic before digging yourself further into the hole.

“Charles Lyell was a lawyer by profession, and his book [Principles of Geology, 1830-1833] is one of the most brilliant briefs ever published by an advocate … Lyell relied upon true bits of cunning to establish his uniformitarian views as the only true geology. First, he set up a straw man to demolish … In fact, the catastrophists were much more empirically minded than Lyell. The geologic record does seem to require catastrophes: rocks are fractured and contorted; whole faunas are wiped out. To circumvent this literal appearance, Lyell imposed his imagination upon the evidence. The geologic record, he argued, is extremely imperfect and we must interpolate into it what we can reasonably infer but cannot see. The catastrophists were the hard-nosed empiricists of their day, not the blinded theological apologists.”

“Gradualism was never ‘proved from the rocks’ by Lyell and Darwin, but was rather imposed as a bias upon nature. …has had a profoundly negative impact by stifling hypotheses and by closing the minds of a profession toward reasonable empirical alternatives to the dogma of gradualism. …Lyell won with rhetoric what he could not carry with data.”

«…I have been trying to show how I think geology got into the hands of the theoreticians who were conditioned by the social and political history of their day more than by observation in the field…In other words, we have allowed ourselves to be brain-washed into avoiding any interpretation of the past that involves extreme and what might be termed “catastrophic” processes».

Tim C: “Could sod kindly explain that if as Wiki says, one Watt equals one joule (J) of energy per second, what does the IPCC’s RF of 1.7 Watts per sq. metre p.a. mean?”
Tim, where does the IPCC quote this number and units?

Tim, as it appears the mob has moved onto another topic, then it appears that I am left to answer my own question. I really think that the IPCC does not quote any such datum as ” 1.7 Watts per sq. metre p.a.”. What the IPCC says is that 1.7 W/m^2 is the net radiative forcing, since the beginning of industrialisation, due to the extra GHGs. There is no “p.a.” in there at all. This is just the usual carelessness that I am so accustomed to seeing at this site.

Tim C,
I am glad I did not waste my Saturday, much of which was spent listening to our ABC’s symphonic offerings, or even my Sunday, spent mostly with my kids, on the nonsense pursued in this thread.

I remain puzzled by your quixotic attempt to “prove” that your own personal energy use is far more important than the radiative forcing due to CO2. It seems plain to me that you have never even attempted a comparison of the total world energy use with the power involved in radiative processes in the earth’s atmosphere. Were you to do so, you would surely come to the conclusion that the radiative forcing far outweighs the energy-use, as also suggested by Neil Fisher. Let’s do what physicists call a “back-of-envelope calculation”, and run through some numbers, to compare the total radiative forcing, in watts, with the average power generated by people, over the whole Earth.
The surface area of the Earth is 5.1 x 10^14 m^2.
The total RF due to additional CO2, at 1.7 W.m^-2, is therefore 8.7 x 10^14 W.
Energy data for the world can be found in the BP statistical review.http://www.bp.com/productlanding.do?categoryId=6929&contentId=7044622

For 2008, the world total was approx. 11,300 million tonnes oil equivalent.
Conversion factor: One million tonnes oil equiv. heat is 42 gigajoules.
Total energy (J) = 11,300 x 10^6 x 42 x 10^9 = 4.74 x 10^20.
The average power consumption, in W, is therefore this number divided by the seconds per year.
The result is 1.5 x 10^13 W.
As can be seen, this is very much smaller than the radiative forcing.

Somebody needs to do something about the formatting of these pages. The way I view them (with IE), the text is gradually moving outside the grey borderline, producing an ungainly vertical line through the text, as we scroll down the posts. Ugh!

I’m a skeptic and as such, it bothers me to read someone who shares my position support it with nonsense. Tim Curtin’s pathetic inability to handle units is an embarrassment.

Those who think ClimateAudit should also debunk anti-AGW nonsense misunderstand the role of that site, which is to take serious research and detect subtle errors. Gross errors both pro and con are assumed to be obvious to the readers without assistance. There’s a certain quality control threshold, and people who can’t distinguish kilowatts from kilowatt-hours don’t rise above it.

Thanks peterd: but (with ht to Mike Hammer) your and my 60 watt bulb consumes 60 joules per second. In the case of the earth we need to talk about power density and energy density because the power is not a property of a discrete object like our light bulb. Instead it is distributed over a surface so that the amount received depends on the area being considered.. Thus we talk about watts/sqM and joules/sqM. In this case the IPCC’s 1.66 watts/sqM (at AR4, WG1, p.141) means that about 36 sq meters of the earth’s surface will be receiving the same power as consumed by our 60 Watt light bulb over one sq.metre.

That means for a given area with respect to power consumption, the ratio is not as you have it, but 36:1 in my favour, not your 56:1 in favour of RF. That is why the UHI effect outweighs the IPCC’s RF of 1.66/sq.metre for any given urban area, and why the RF has no visible impact on temperature at Mauna Loa, even if the Observatory there probably covers say 5000 sq metres. The BP energy figure you cite is restricted to a very small portion of the globe at any given time.

BTW, like you I enjoyed the Symphonic countdown although I did not agree with the No.1 – Beethoven’s 9th should have been out front.

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About Me

Jennifer Marohasy is a scientist, author and speaker.
Dr Marohasy has a PhD from the University of Queensland, worked for twelve years as a researcher for the Queensland government, then six years as environmental manager for the Queensland sugar industry, and then six years as a senior fellow at the Melbourne-based Institute of Public Affairs. She is currently an adjunct Research Fellow at Central Queensland University funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.
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